Greenery strengthens Singapore’s climate resilience and makes our living environment more conducive for everyone. With greening efforts for, by and with our communities, NParks continues to nurture our natural heritage for everyone in Singapore.
In 1963, founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew planted a Pink Mempat (Cratoxylum formosum) to kickstart Singapore’s greening journey. Today, Mempat trees in Singapore most commonly bloom in April or August after a prolonged dry spell followed by heavy rain.
Photo credit: Chan Chung Leong
On 16 June 1963, founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew kickstarted the nationwide greening campaign with the planting of a Mempat tree at Farrer Circus. In the early days of greening, the aim was to green up Singapore as quickly as possible, with the involvement of the community very early on through community tree planting events. Guided by Mr Lee’s vision, Singapore evolved from a Garden City in the 1960s, to a biophilic City in a Garden in the 2010s. We integrated greenery into our urban landscape, safeguarded our nature reserves, enhanced ecological connectivity, and created a network of parks and park connectors to provide recreational opportunities.
In 2020, together with the launch of the Singapore Green Plan 2030, a whole-of-nation movement to chart Singapore’s sustainable development, the OneMillionTrees movement was launched, to plant one million more trees by 2030 and to transform Singapore into a City in Nature.
Trees improve physical, mental and social well-being while enhancing climate resilience. As of March 2023, over 683,000 trees have been planted throughout Singapore with the help of the community since the commencement of the OneMillionTrees movement. In addition, over 400 volunteers were trained and will help to support tree planting activities.
Photo credit: Limbang Grassroots Organisations
Photo credit: Bryan Yeo
Mr Kong Yit San, Executive Director Jurong Lake Gardens, has worked to realise Singapore’s journey from Garden City to City in a Garden and now City in Nature. He speaks about how early greening efforts were tightly interwoven with the development of modern Singapore. Greenery served to elevate Singapore’s international standing, but above all, greenery was for the people and helped to provide a high-quality living environment for all.
The Nature Kakis Network was launched in May 2023 to encourage greater greening participation among the wider community. NParks supports Nature Kakis in developing City in Nature-related initiatives at the grassroots level by providing training and workshops on topics such as nature conservation, local biodiversity, gardening, therapeutic horticulture, and community animals. In the reporting year, 18 Nature Kakis Network chapters were established across the island, with each receiving seed funding of up to S$5,000 from the Garden City Fund. The chapters have since organised over 120 events for more than 8,000 participants to engage in nature-related activities.
To spark interest in greening Singapore among the young, NParks has provided all Primary 3 students with a plant starter kit for the past 11 years. This is part of the Every Child a Seed programme tailored to complement the Primary Science syllabus, with an emphasis on the part students can play in shaping our City in Nature. In 2023, students also received an updated plant journal featuring new activities designed to help them understand Singapore’s journey, in commemoration of 60 years of greening efforts.
With the full resumption of physical activities after the Covid-19 pandemic such as learning journeys, in-person school talks and plays, and teachers’ training, NParks reached out to over 200,000 students, educators and teacher trainees in the past year. Riding the digital wave of education, concerted efforts were taken to align the development of online resources with the school curriculum set out by the Ministry of Education.
These resources, programmes and engagements allowed educators and students alike to become more familiar with the importance of conserving our native biodiversity and behaving responsibly towards animals around us, planting the seeds of nature stewardship in them.
For youths, the latest iteration of the Youth Stewards for Nature programme saw close to 120 youths lead 16 projects in the scopes of greenery, animal management and nature appreciation, over a six-month period. These included conducting public guided walks and therapeutic horticulture programmes, tracking the movement of wildlife and designing digital outreach content to promote nature appreciation among the young.
In anticipation of the ninth edition of the Singapore Garden Festival, a free-to-attend Prelude event ran from 14 to 17 March 2024 at Takashimaya Square on Orchard Road. Members of the public were treated to a vibrant show of flowers, with the largest showcase of Ikebana floral displays in the Festival's history, as well as celebrity and heritage orchid displays.
It was announced at the Prelude that, besides the customary awards and competitions featuring leading floral designers around the globe, the Festival will feature the Singapore Gardeners’ Cup which celebrates community gardeners islandwide.
Since it was established in 1859, the Singapore Botanic Gardens has become an important centre of science, research and plant conservation. This past year, visitors also had the opportunity to learn more about Singapore's green roots through a variety of exhibitions and programmes.
The Singapore Botanic Gardens Heritage Museum reopened on 26 June 2023, refreshed with new interactive exhibits that trace the Gardens’ rich heritage, including stories of key figures who contributed towards building the Gardens to its current status as a leading tropical botanical institution and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Its opening coincided with the 2023 edition of the Heritage Festival and was part of the commemoration of 60 years of greening in Singapore.
Visitors also had the chance to appreciate nature at the Botanical Art Gallery, located in the Gallop Extension. For example, visitors to the Tropical Forest Sceneries: Singapore & Beyond exhibition were immersed in sceneries of changing forests in Singapore, from verdant abundance and grandeur, to deforestation, and finally to reforestation and restoration.
Over at the Centre for Ethnobotany, visitors to the Rainforest Remedies exhibition learnt about the diverse ways plants have historically and traditionally been used by regional communities to heal.
In collaboration with City Developments Limited (CDL) and Ocean Geographic, NParks launched the third edition of the Climate Action Exhibition series with Melting Ice, Sinking Cities: An Urgency to Change the Present and Save Humanity. It ran from June 2023 to March 2024 at the recently refurbished CDL Gallery. Visitors virtually journeyed to the Antarctic and witnessed the effects of global warming on glaciers and communities, gaining insights into the interconnectedness of nature and humans.
NParks, together with the Housing Development Board (HDB), Ministry of National Development (MND) and PUB co-organised the From Mudflats to Metropolis exhibition across five locations in Singapore from September to November 2023. It showcased the values our founding leaders held as they planned and developed Singapore, through key milestones in our urban transformation journey and significant contemporary efforts to enhance our living environment.
Mature trees are part of our natural heritage and serve as important landmarks in our City in Nature. Mr Tee Swee Ping, a retired arborist who now serves on NParks’ Heritage Tree Panel recounts his chance discovery of a mature Margaritaria indica in 2012, a new genus and species record for Singapore Flora.
NParks continues to engage the community in the digital landscape, growing our presence online. As of March 2024, we have 171,000 fans on Facebook, 67,600 followers on Instagram, over 51,900 fans on X, 23,100 subscribers on YouTube, 14,700 followers on LinkedIn, 14,200 followers on TikTok and 10,200 subscribers on Telegram.
A new podcast titled That’s Wild was launched, featuring staff and guests from the nature community. Listeners can tune in to conversations about "boring sponges" and "rewilding", and pick up a new skill in identifying bird calls — all part of conservation efforts to transform Singapore into a City in Nature.
The online community was also given a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the inner workings of NParks, through the NParks Portraits video series. From ringing birds in the middle of the night for research to training dogs to detect the scents of illegally traded wildlife products, viewers gained a better understanding of the hardware and science that go into our work.
In February 2024, we released a second edition of our Spotify Playlist, Park Beats: A Love Letter from NParks. Classic oldies and modern pop love songs serve as a complementary auditory companion to anyone’s walk or picnic in our green spaces.
On 1 April 2023, NParks completed the development of Lakeside Garden, one of three gardens within the 90 ha Jurong Lake Gardens, offering a host of green spaces and facilities for the community to enjoy nature-based recreational experiences.
Sustainability is at the heart of the development of Jurong Lake Gardens. Footpaths were constructed from carbon dioxide mineralised concrete. During the production of this concrete, industrial waste carbon dioxide is permanently embedded into it, thereby making the footpaths a carbon sink. Beyond physical infrastructure, the Gardens exemplifies nature-based solutions, including vegetated detention ponds that provide a lush landscape for park users in the SkatePark @ Lakeside Garden. The water harvested in the detention ponds can be used to irrigate the northern section of Lakeside Garden if needed, allowing the Gardens to conserve water.
In November 2023, NParks opened a 1.3 ha extension to Villa Verde Park, marking the completion of enhancement works. NParks consulted residents as well as members of the Friends of the Parks and Friends of Rail Corridor communities in the design process, resulting in an area that boasts naturalistic features, horticultural therapeutic spaces and spots for social interactions. One resident, who is also a doctor at Ng Teng Fong General Hospital, provided guidance in studying and selecting the equipment for the fitness corner and adding ground markings to guide self-directed physiotherapy exercises. These exercises were designed with input from the Physiotherapy Department of the hospital.
The completion of another 8 km of Park Connectors brought the total length of Singapore's Park Connector Network to 387 km, taking us closer to our goal having 500 km of Park Connectors by 2030. Park Connectors continue to enhance recreational connectivity across the island and bring people closer to nature.
In February 2024, NParks announced the completion of the 18 km Eastern Corridor, a curated network of Park Connectors that links up parks in eastern Singapore. This offers the community more nature-based recreational experiences as well as enhanced connectivity between Pasir Ris Park and East Coast Park. Using the Park Connectors, residents in the east can now easily get to Tampines Eco Green to birdwatch or enjoy a variety of activities at East Coast Park without ever getting in a motor vehicle.
In southwest Singapore, 13 parks, including HortPark, Labrador Nature Park and West Coast Park, will be enhanced over the next few years. Each will have its own unique thematic identity and features for expanded recreational activities for all ages. More Park Connectors and enhanced parks will bring us closer to the goal of having every household live within a 10-minute walk of a park.
What started out as an innovative way to maximise the use of underutilised land is now a permanent fixture across Singapore, known as Park Connectors. Mr Yeo Meng Tong, Associate Director of the Centre for Urban Greenery & Ecology (CUGE), is a landscape architect who was part of the team that pioneered the idea of the Park Connector Network shares how it was conceptualised and how it has evolved in our City in Nature.
Dance, Dance, Retro was the theme of the 18th edition of NParks Concert Series in the Park: Rockestra®, held in Fort Canning Park as part of the Heritage Festival 2023. Designed to get people to enjoy our green spaces, it was a night full of grooving, shimmying and boogieing to retro hits performed by local musicians and bands.
Throughout the weeklong festival, family-friendly activities such as craft workshops, treasure hunts and guided walks brought the history and legacies of Fort Canning Park and the Singapore Botanic Gardens to life.
Photo credit: FXRXS Pictures
With skyrise greenery being successfully adopted as an integral urban greening approach for our built environment, NParks launched the fourth edition of the Skyrise Greenery e-bulletin. This online resource highlights exemplary skyrise greenery integrations and progressive greenery typologies in buildings and developments. This is part of NParks’ ongoing and active engagement with agencies, developers, building owners, estate managers and the industry to raise the standards and awareness of sustainable skyrise greenery implementations.
In the past year, another 38 ha of skyrise greenery was added, bringing the total skyrise greenery footprint in Singapore to 193 ha.
Research findings on enhancing green roof efficiencies were also shared in an article in the E-bulletin. It found that co-locating green roofs with solar panels helped increase photovoltaic system energy yields while lowering ambient temperatures, which further improves the survivability and growth of shade-tolerant plant species. This study was part of a collaboration between NParks, the Building and Construction Authority and the National University of Singapore.
In the reporting year, NParks opened three new Therapeutic Gardens at Yishun Pond Park, Sembawang Park and Sun Plaza Park.
They meet the diverse needs of the community, including seniors, hospital outpatients and children. The Therapeutic Garden in Sembawang Park, in particular, features a wheelchair-accessible Forest Classroom. Children’s senses are engaged as they play and interact in a lush natural setting, fostering improved mental well-being and a better appreciation of Singapore’s biodiversity. The garden at Yishun Pond Park was built in close consultation with Khoo Teck Puat Hospital, with enhanced landscape features that bring about restorative effects to visitors’ mental and physical ailments.
Further up north, Woodlands Healing Garden, opened in December 2023, is the first park purpose-built for healing, and the latest addition to Singapore’s 14 therapeutic gardens. The 1.5 ha garden is integrated with Singapore’s newest hospital Woodlands Health. It was designed in close consultation with the hospital for features which can best provide visitors and patients with a variety of nature-based experiences for mental, emotional and physical healing and restoration. The Garden was recognised with an Award of Excellence at the Asia Pacific Landscape Awards 2023.
Six of Singapore’s 32 Nature Playgardens were completed in the past year. They can be found at East Coast Park, one-north Park, Sembawang Park, Villa Verde Park, Yishun Pond Park and Woodlands Healing Garden. Nature Playgardens support child development, learning and well-being, as demonstrated in a collaborative pilot study by NParks and the Singapore University of Social Sciences. The findings of the study, Nature Playgardens for Children’s Well-being, were shared with early childhood educators at the Early Childhood Development Agency’s Early Childhood Celebrations & Conference 2023.
As part of NParks’ Rewilding Plan, which was initiated in 2021 to introduce more naturalistic landscapes across Singapore, NParks has rewilded 12 sites this financial year, including Halus Nature Way and Tanah Merah Coast Road. A total of 39 sites have been rewilded, surpassing the original plan for 32 sites.
Another 20 km of Nature Ways in Ang Mo Kio, Queensway, Tampines and Woodlands were completed in 2023. This brings the total length of Nature Ways in Singapore to 210 km. In this same period, NParks planted over 16,000 trees in industrial estates, which now have over 117,000 trees planted.
Through the Community in Bloom programme, NParks facilitated the establishment of over 80 community gardens in 2023, adding to the over 2,000 such gardens across the island. We also launched 220 new Allotment Garden plots in addition to more than 2,400 existing plots in parklands islandwide. These are part of NParks' efforts to make everyday gardening more accessible to Singaporeans.
NParks has also embraced digitisation to support community gardening efforts. A new gardening portal, GardeningSG, was launched on 4 November 2023. The website streamlines information and resources from NParks’ current website into an accessible one-stop online portal. Offering programmes and a comprehensive range of horticulture resources tailored to Singapore’s tropical climate, it helps gardeners of all experience levels troubleshoot and acquire new skills and information.
